A Day in the Life of Pam the Baby Cow Farmer

Hello...so be proud of me... i actually planned this blog out so all the pics will be in the right order! some of them still came out sideways tho and I can't figure out why...o well! So here is what a typical day is like for me. I get up around 7/7:15, eat breakfast which is usually some sort of cereal (i sometimes have it with milk!) but usually i mix it in with yogurt that jenny and i make! and am ready to feed cows by 8.


We first attend to the cows by the house...we let the baby ones out of the shed into their paddocks (some of them stay in their paddocks all the time and don't get to go inside). The girl in this pic is Keora (sp?). She's from Japan and is leaving on Sunday. And the cows are all the whitefaces. On a whole this lot is good, but there is one in particular that likes to try and escape!

Now that i am fully awake - :) - Good morning! (my i was having a bad hair day!)

Then it's time to go around and make sure all the cows at this farm have enough pellets and water for the day...and to give some cuddles to Sweet Baby James - say hi!

On this particular day, we corralled the group SBJ is in down by the yards so we could check out a couple of them that either looked sick, or had an infected ear. This big cow in front, however, is Pam...so here's Pam and Pam! There is nothing wrong with Pam (thank goodness!) and she is the biggest calf we have so far. We did notice another rather large one that looks similar to Pam who we named Faith :)

Then we checked on a couple of the cows that have eczema (sp?) :( the poor dears...this one with the coat on had it really bad and his skin was all peeling off (it looked so gross). So, we put zinc ointment on him and a coat because the sun makes it worse...he's looking better already!

And last but not least...we say hi to Bulgy, or Bungle Eyes, or Mr Eyes...he's the one with that Star Gazers disease :( he doesn't seem to be getting any better yet. but his eyes aren't bulging as much as they used to! Oh yea, we also have to feed the Chooks before we head up to the other farm!

Next, it's up to the top farm! The mountain is covered in clouds...as usual. In the morning, there is now only one lot that gets fed milk because we've weened the rest. So, we'll feed them milk (the babies), and then I have to lug 3 bags of pellets to one lot of cows, 1.5 to another, then get a bag of palm kernel for the big guys. and make sure they all have water.

Here is one of the babies. They are all whitefaced Herefords (I think). They are really cute and this one is my favorite. She's the smallest of the bunch and we affectionately call her curly, or peanut. But she's grown a little bit, so we call her Cashew now :) and she's sticking out her tongue because she's trying to lick me - ew! calf slobber is particularly slimy. i have to deal with it a lot...so I've kinda gotten used to it haha.

After all of those guys are fed and we check on the big boys and to make sure Adrian has enough pellets, we went over to meet Brian and Dennis's (the guys I went pig hunting with) new puppies!! They are SO cute...i can't get over them :) The black one is Brian's, he is thinking of naming is Tui (a local NZ bird and also a brand of beer), and the other one is Dennis's dog named Jack (his dad was named Hammer). Jack has one blue eye and one greenish eye!

Say Hi Jack! :)

Why so guilty looking Tui? (pronounced Tooey).

And we also have to say hi to Belle, one of Brian's 4 other hunting dogs...she loves Tummy rubs.

Say Bye puppies!! (i have a bunch more pics of these too that i want to post haha).

On this particular day, we also took a drive out to Tarata. It was really pretty countryside and was similar looking to where I went pig hunting.

This is Keora standing in front of some ancient rocks. See those horizontal lines? Those mark where the ocean used to be millions of years ago - cool! In some spots you can see imprints of shells and stuff...but we couldn't find any :(

Here is a tunnel...it's a special tunnel because it goes through one of these huge ridges and Jon's dad and grandfather helped dig it out!

Here is me standing in the tunnel...a car was coming around the corner right before this pic was taken - ah!

Then we took a drive over this swing bridge...the Bertrand Rd Suspension Bridge to be exact. It was pretty cool, went right over the Waitara River. I was standing on it taking a pic and another car started to come at me!

Once we got back from our tour of Tarata and Inglewood (where Jenny grew up), we stopped at Jenny's cousin's house where they made me play the piano for them and had a cuppa (cup of tea). Here, we also picked some fresh asparagus which we had for dinner - yum! By the time wee finally got back to Jenny's it was wayyy past feeding time...it was around 5 and we usually feed the cows down by the house around 330! So we hurried around to get these babies fed...this is Bambi, he looks so much more like a deer in person!

And this is freckles...he's a brat but loves cuddles :) We also have to feed the chooks (chickens) and collect all the eggs...we normally get between 20-30 eggs a day! There are nests all over the place. Jenny sells most of her eggs, but we get to eat plenty of them too :) mmmm free range eggs!

Then, we have to go back up to the top farm to make sure the cows are ok. Occasionally, they like to play dead on us...like this rather fat one here!

Then it's one more look at the mountain and our day is almost done! All we have left to do is get firewood, make a fire, make dinner...and sometimes dessert :) and then relax for the rest of the evening!

Not all days are as busy as this, but you get the idea! I hope you all enjoyed reading my novel and that you got an idea of the day in the life of a Calf Farmer :)